The Future of News: That's us

Justin Riray
2/28/09
Jour 61
The Future of News
Word Count: 464

We are the future of news. One could argue that news relies on events; accidents, conflicts, touching stories. I believe that news relies on its reporters and journalists. Without us, people wouldn’t get news. We are the link between the human race and their knowledge of that is going on around them.

It seems as if almost every journalism graduate that doesn’t get an internship feels like they are ‘settling’ for being a freelancer. If you think about it, many of the free content websites were created and developed by a nobody - a freelancer. Google, Youtube, and Myspace were all produced by smart people who chose to do their own thing with their skills instead of working an entry-level job at some well known company. The world of journalism will always rely on freelancers to do the ‘guerilla inventing.’ While large and prosperous companies stay doing what they do best, it is usually the freelancers who come up with ground breaking technology or methods of news media.

Even if new journalists do work for a large company, in a way, they are all freelancers. Veterans will always be able to get the job done, but it is the interns and the rookies that always have the opportunity to bring something fresh to the table; and opportunity to change the world of news. Mindy McAdams emphasizes the importance that we know how to work as many programs and properly use as much equipment as possible. The more we know how to manipulate media and news, the better journalists we will be. Many young aspiring writers and broadcasters may have the notion that journalism is just writing; I was one of them, and boy was it shocking to know that knowing how to write extremely well was just the tip of the iceberg.

In the “recovering journalist “ blog, the author reminds us to do our best to concentrate on concentrate on projects and products that are groundbreaking. The faster we learn how to adapt to new programs and methods, the more prepared we will be to become a journalist of the future.

Why shouldn’t we just sit back and perform the way all of our college textbooks instruct us to? If anyone thinks news is just delivering facts, and that it is a piece of cake, the truth is that creativity and organizational skills need to be of the highest caliber in order to stay with the ever-changing world. We are all striving to play a part in the future of news, so damn right this business is competitive. Writers pull-over, because up and coming journalists are equipped with so much more than a pencil and paper.







My favorite excerpts from the blog links:

http://mindymcadams.com/tojou/2009/advice-for-journalism-students-now/

*Browse through some of the links listed below and read some blog posts and/or articles on the changing face of journalism. Then pick two or three pieces that you find interesting and write your own blog post on "The Future of News." In your blog post, discuss some of the ideas and innovations you've read about and what promise you think they may hold for the future of journalism. Also, do they give you any new ideas about your own career options?

Would you recommend that college students/recent grads become a freelancer — either as a way to get experience before becoming an employee, or to make a career of it?
1. Yes: 71 (provides experience/clips; gets your foot in door; proves yourself valuable to decision-makers for hiring)
2. Hedged response: 11 (difficult to make a living; not as a career; only as last resort)
3. No: 4 (difficult to make a living; cannot hire experienced writers in entry-level positions)

At a minimum, new hires need to know how things like blogs, rss feeds, twitter and google alerts work just to leverage them in reporting and to monitor the beat online. But you also have to be confident and competent enough to grab a camera and a laptop and run to the scene of a fire when you’re the only one around. Oh, and while you still need to be able to craft that compelling narrative for tomorrow’s front stoop, you also need to write cleanly and quickly on deadline for the Web.

I don’t use my Web skills in my day job every day. But I do use them. And when there’s a new idea I suggest or they want to try, because I have those skills and exploit them more than any other reporter here, I’m the go-to person on experimenting with the cool new things we’re doing. I can’t complain about that.


http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2009/02/whos-doing-.html

I'm going to skim over a few things, like Twitter, that have quickly become mainstream, and try to concentrate on products and projects that are breaking new ground–and hopefully can become examples for others to replicate. Some are fairly well-known; others have been too obscure, in my view. But all of them should be more widely adopted. Just about every news site should be doing versions of every one of these, and more.

“Concentrate on projects and products that are breaking new ground.”

Tribune Co. has taken a lot of heat for some of its management's wacky ideas, but a couple of the Chicago Tribune's ongoing projects are real pathbreakers. TribLocal is probably the strongest effort yet at creating a hyperlocal site that combines professional and user-generated content; as a co-founder of Backfence and close follower of all things hyperlocal, I've watched TribLocal closely and with much admiration. It's expanded to more than 40 Chicago suburbs and seems to be getting traction with readers and advertisers. Tribune's other interesting endeavor is Colonel Tribune, maybe the single must unusual thing being done online by any major newspaper. Col. Tribune is a fictional character created by the Tribune as a sort of host of and guide to the newspaper site and, more significantly, a participant in social networks like Facebook and Twitter (where the colonel has 5,400 followers). If nothing else, the colonel gives a somewhat drab news site a touch of personality.